Interstate Adventures

My oldest daughter tried to convince us to get to the Pacific Northwest in time for a late summer trail half marathon, with 2,000 feet of elevation gain. Since I have not been fully engaged with running for quite some time, she had a lot of persuading to do. 

The reason I considered it is not because I am sure I can do it. I am not close to the “marathon Deanna” I once was. It is because I love to run.  

She is almost the same age as I was when I started running. I am proud to see that I have passed on this love for activity that goes beyond the gym. When I was her age I decided I would swim, bike, run, hike, and ski forever. I always had an event to look forward to. When she was little, my parents took her to cheer me across the finish for my first Olympic Distance triathlon. When she was a college student, she skipped a class at Stonehill College to cheer me across the finish for the Boston Marathon. 

My youngest daughter recently asked me, “What was your favorite time in life?” I confessed it was when I was coaching, running, and doing triathlons. 

As my children became adults, however, I started to work more and train less. I was not signing up for races anymore. I had to reconcile being a professor of health sciences while not taking care of my own health. When working in higher education became more exhausting than a half Ironman, I knew I needed to make a change.

Without having a schedule anymore to keep me at home, I feel a constant tug to get in the van. At home it is easy to settle into a rhythm of running at 10 a.m. on my familiar routes or swimming during lap time at my gym pool. In the van I am always somewhere new. I have to explore to find adventure in a hike, a bike, or a run. If I am lucky I find a bakery too. 

My favorite run routine while on the road is walk-run intervals for anywhere up to an hour. I find a strip of pavement and after a warm-up, I run the strip, walk back to the start. I go by how I feel each day. I have done this run at a municipal campground in Missouri, along Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City, at a campground in southern Oklahoma, and more recently at Salisbury Beach campground in Massachusetts. I try to run three times per week but I might ride, hike, or swim instead depending on where I am. I’m no longer restricted by work hours or a gym. I’m no longer training for performance. The pressure is off to “get the workout in”. I can let the run find me whether at a campground or nearby trail.

When my daughter asked me again if I was doing the race, I confessed to her that I was not ready for the kind of training that I know it takes to run 13.1 with 2,000 feet of elevation in the woods. I did, however, tell her that I would be at the finish line cheering her across. 

Right now I’m training for something else—to keep showing up when my adult children invite me on a hike to an alpine lake, a Mother’s Day mountain bike ride, or a 5k in downtown Seattle.